RELIGION. 187 sin, the Lord came down from heaven every day to see his orders strictly obeyed, and to convince himself that they gained their daily bread with the sweat of their brow. Eve, or as the negroes call our first mother, Hauve, bore daily many hundred children, which she was obliged to shew to theow, (God the Father) who sent them into all parts of the world there to multiply. It happened once that Haute brought several hundred children into the world of a darker colour. When Ahou came and saw these, he reproached Hauve, and said he would not have any more of these dark babes, took them immediately away from her, and transplanted them into the present Abyssinia. Shortly after this, Hauve brought forth another lot of similar children, which for fear of the Abou, she locked in an oven to secrete them ; but Abou, on his arrival, had a suspicion of what had transpired, and as he did not receive a satisfactory answer from Hauve respecting the last children, hunted for them ever}'where, and found them eventually in the oven. When they crept out of their place of confinement, they were all quite black with the soot. Adou in his wrath at this second offence on the part of Hauve, again took away her children, and swore that they should, in commemoration of their mother's crime, remain for ever as black as when they emerged from the oven, and that nothing in the world should be capable of wiping off the stain.

These children now became the original parents of the negroes.